As an IBM marketing manager, my job includes writing about storage technology.This post is about more than technology, though.It’s about a new breakthrough capability for managing storage costs and service levels.

I recently met with IBM Distinguished Engineer, Mike Sylvia, who has been working on a Business Transformation project to enable automated right tiering for storage in IBM data centers.Right tiering is the notion that data should be hosted on the optimal storage tier to balance cost and performance requirements.

Mike explained that applications tend to be hosted on top tier storage.When he analyzed actual usage patterns, Mike found most data can be effectively hosted on lower cost storage.Mike’s project put numbers to a problem that is often hidden from view and, until now, nearly impossible to solve.

Hosting data on the wrong storage tier turns out to be a huge efficiency problem.Mike predicts IBM will save $13 million over 3 years in one data center, by periodically moving data to the right tier.During the pilot, users saw their cost for storage drop by 50% per TB on average.This is big.

Repeat:Usage patterns change over time, of course, so right tiering becomes an ongoing process.

Why does it work?

Automated right tiering delivers the efficiency benefits of Information Lifecycle Management without the headaches and hidden costs.Automated right tiering has significant benefits for both data owners and IT leaders, so everyone wins.

For example, application and database owners can gain the following benefits:

Applications can move to top tier storage when they need it, without waiting for a maintenance window.

Average storage costs drop significantly, without a drop in services.

IT leaders benefit, too.For example:

Storage tier decisions are based on analysis of actual usage patterns, not predictions.Storage performance management tasks are eliminated.

Data can quickly and easily be moved back to its original storage tier if requested, without incurring an outage.

IBM automated right tiering works with most storage systems, so deployment is nondisruptive.

The technology that enables automated right tiering has significant additional benefits, such as the ability to eliminate scheduled outages for storage system maintenance.

Is it possible to achieve higher levels of data protection, recovery and availability for the virtualized systems than in your non-virtualized environment? Yes, is what you will hear from IBM and VMware at VMworld® 2012.

We’re all aware of how data protection and recovery has only gotten more complicated with the explosive growth in server virtualization. Applications running on virtual environments are becoming even more critical for business success, and the data volumes residing in virtual environments are growing in leaps and bounds. Also, given the shared physical resources of ESX/ESXi systems, a smarter approach to I/O intensive processes such as backup and recovery are needed.

As a virtual environment user, if you’re looking for faster backup and restore for the VMware datastores, then IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager Version 3.1 (referred to as FCM 3.1) is the answer. It is designed to handle high demands - but how quick can it be?

Seeking to expunge all doubts, and recognizing the demand for efficient and fast backup of virtual machine data residing in VMware datastores, the Tivoli Storage Manager performance team carried out a benchmark test.

To assess how fast FCM 3.1 can meet the data protection demands from VMware virtual environments, the team conducted tests on VMware environments that have up to 1000 on-line virtual machines with a total capacity of 18 TB of disk space.

The results were astounding. Test results for up to 1000 virtual machines (the maximum tested) showed that FlashCopy backup elapsed time increases linearly with the number of virtual machines:* 500 virtual machines can be backed up by FCM 3.1 in 15 minutes

* 1000 virtual machines can be backed up by FCM 3.1 in 36 minutes

So how is this useful to you? FCM 3.1 provides:

* Simplified deployment and management of advanced, application-aware data backup* Improved backup and recovery times from hours to minutes* Improved administrative productivity by simplified management and automation of routine tasks